2018 Season

"Today's art world is powerfully drawn to Kentridge because he's mastered one of our period's greatest challenges: how to create an art of cultural authority, one that takes the moral measure of our time." — New York Magazine

Renowned South African artist William Kentridge synthesizes elements of his practice to conjure his grandest and most ambitious production to date, commissioned by the Armory. The large-scale new work expressively speaks to the nearly two million African porters and carriers used by the British, French, and Germans who bore the brunt of the casualties during the First World War in Africa and the historical significance of this story as yet left largely untold.

"The Park Avenue Armory has worked hard to carve out a niche for chamber music programming that is every bit as distinct as the monumental talk-of-the-town productions that take place in the Drill Hall." — The New York Times

Performed in the restored Board of Officers Room and other intimate spaces, these enchanting musical moments utilize the pristine acoustics and intimate scale originally intended by many composers to invoke the salon culture of the Gilded Age, while taking the art form in bold new directions in the hands of some of today's most exciting musical interpreters.

Held in our historic period rooms, these insightful conversations throughout the year feature artists, scholars, cultural leaders, and social trailblazers who gather to offer new points of view and unique perspectives on Armory productions, explore a range of themes and relevant topics, and encourage audiences to think beyond conventional interpretations and perspectives of art.

"Sitting in a chair in the Veterans Room and slowly panning side to side and up and down (which you will do when you go there), you encounter a kind of visual music: the energy in that design and those colors, the shades of brown and blue and black and pale yellow, alive and roaring at you." — The New York Times

This season, the Artists Studio series adds to the exuberance of the Veterans Room with interventions by some of today's most creative voices who have a distinct relationship to sound with a visual aesthetic that blurs the boundaries between installation and performance.

Federico García Lorca's 1934 devastating drama is radically reimagined by Australian director and dramatist Simon Stone, who transforms the achingly powerful tale of a provincial Spanish woman's desperate desire to have a child into a parable of modern life. Making her New York stage debut, Billie Piper delivers a fearless performance as the woman—now a blogger and journalist—driven to the unthinkable by her obsession with her own infertility while brutally documenting her trauma amidst the internet-surfing blogosphere of today.

Pulling from long-standing fascinations with film and television tropes, abstract sculpture, game ephemera, poetry, apocryphic histories, internet esoterica, and philosophies of being, Oneohtrix Point Never's MYRIAD is a hyperstitial “concertscape” imagined from the perspective of an alien intelligence that explores disorienting relationships between space and sound and mutates forms of live musical performance.

"one of the most popular contemporary artists [who] turns his serious ideas into buoyant aesthetic concepts" — The New York Times

Commissioned by the Armory, interdisciplinary artist Nick Cave creates a dance-based town hall to which the community of New York is invited to "let go." This ambitious new work—a hybrid installation, performance, gathering and dancing environment—acts as an alternative platform for viewers to speak their minds through movement, work out frustrations, and celebrate independence as well as community.

Tony Award-winning director Ivo van Hove unleashes his visionary creativity at the Armory with the prestigious Comédie-Française, which for more than three centuries has boldly faced the perils of the stage, for the North American premiere of his adaptation of Luchino Visconti's desperately dark drama The Damned.

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker explores the movement, dance, and transcendental dimension found in J.S. Bach's iconic masterpiece in a new, evening length work. Making its North American premiere, this new dance piece embodies Bach's polyphonic mastery by setting dancers originating from different generations of her company Rosas in direct dialogue with musicians from the baroque ensemble B'Rock, who perform the concertos live under the baton of Amandine Beyer in their North American debut.

Support for Park Avenue Armory's artistic season has been generously provided by the Charina Endowment Fund, the Altman Foundation, The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, The Emma and Georgina Bloomberg Foundation, the Marc Haas Foundation, The Kaplen Brothers Fund, the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation, the Leon Levy Foundation, the May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, the Richenthal Foundation, and the Isak and Rose Weinman Foundation. Additional support has been provided by the Armory's Artistic Council.

Yerma is supported in part by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

MYRIAD is supported in part by a gift from Daniel Clay Houghton.

Park Avenue Armory is grateful to the Ford Foundation for its generous support of The Let Go.

The Six Brandenburg Concertos is supported in part by the Harkness Foundation for Dance.

The Head & the Load is supported in part by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Daniel Clay Houghton, Art Dealers Association of America, and the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts. The production is also supported in part by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Recital Series is supported in part by The Reed Foundation. The Recital Series is also made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

The Artists Studio is supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the city council, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and the National Endowment for the Arts.